Re: china

At 03:55 PM 5/3/2000 -0700, you wrote:
>> >There is plenty of documentation of the progressive goals of the 
>Cultural
>> >Revolution, to check the "capitalist roaders" who wanted to overturn the
>> >revolution.  There is also documentation of the factional fighting
>> >within the CCP between Mao, supporters, and various rivals.  Both can
>> >logically be true, they are not contradictory claims.
>> 
>> Cites?
>
>Daubier, Jean.  1974.  A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
>       Random/Vintage.
>
>Collier, John and Elsie.  1973.  China's Socialist Revolution.  
>       Monthly Review Press.
>
>Anything by William Hinton, the agronomist.
>
>These are all first-hand accounts.

OK, I'll check it out. Thanks for giving them to me.

>> I did not say that. I just think that cold-bloodedly organizing 
>university
>> students into radical paramilitary groups and sending them against your
>> ideological opponents, bringing the country near collapse, is a very poor
>> policy -- both from the human rights standpoint and from the long-term
>> economic standpoint.
>
>
>I know of no evidence that the country was near collapse.  Raw economic
>indicators show strong growth through the 1960s.  You continue to extract
>the conflict from the battle over the future of the revolution.  It wasn't
>one side "sending students against ideological opponents," it was a
>two-sided struggle over basic policy and direction.

OK. So where were Deng Xiaopeng and Lui Shaoqui's counterpart to the Red 
Guards?

>> The Cultural Revolution made people suffer for no good reason.
>
>This is simply totally uninformed. Whether you support it or not, it
>certainly wasn't "for no good reason."

OK, I'll rephrase that -- "The Cultural Revolution, whatever its aims, made
liberal use of violence put towards ideological aims, good as they may have
been, that compares only to the radical phases of the French Revolution in
its thoroughness across an entire nation-state."

>RH